In Suspended Daydreams, Atlanta-based artist Alic Brock presents a series of dreamlike paintings that blur the line between fantasy and reality at Richard Heller Gallery. In moments of personal and societal instability, Brock explores the refuge of the imagination—its ability to soothe, distort, and sometimes disorient. These works suggest that while daydreams offer necessary escape, they also carry a warning: if we linger too long in unreality, we may become unmoored from the strangeness of the world around us.
The exhibition features acrylic paintings made using Brock’s signature airbrush technique. Working with ultra-precision, he “chops and screws” his subject matter—beginning with digital manipulation of found and personal imagery, then translating those distortions into painted form. Skewed stencils, layered collage, and saturated color combine to create scenes that feel suspended in time and thought: fractured, fluid, and emotionally charged.
This body of work was shaped by a period of profound transition: the passing of Brock’s mother, and shortly after, the birth of his son. These dual events—experiencing both grief and new life—offered a new lens on memory and storytelling. Reading simple picture books to his son prompted Brock to consider the kinds of visual stories he might create—ones that feel accessible on the surface but resonate with deeper emotional undercurrents.
Born in 1992 in Dayton, Ohio, Alic Brock is a self-taught artist who lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. His practice often draws on pop culture—featuring athletes, musicians, and occasionally art-historic figures like Man Ray—remixed through a process of digital and manual manipulation. With repetition, inversion, and a vibrant color palette, Brock’s paintings become meditations on visual transmission and the blurred channels of contemporary communication.
In Suspended Daydreams, Brock invites viewers into a liminal space—a quiet, shimmering in-between—where the personal, the cultural, and the imagined overlap.